Category: Blog
The Boy Who Stood on the Burning Deck
Date Posted: 19/09/2010
Was the son of the captain of the French flagship L’Orient at the battle of the Nile (1798). The captain’s surname was Casabianca, which is why the famous poem that begins ‘The boy stood on the burning deck’ is called Casabianca. I have just found a great eye-witness report .... Read More
British Museum Discoveries
Date Posted: 15/09/2010
Those who have been following me on Twitter (twitter/navalhistoryguy) will know that I have spent most of the week trying to hunt down some sketches relating to the Glorious Firsts of June (1794) and yesterday I found them! They were made by a chap called Philip Jacques de .... Read More
The Duke of York’s Dog
Date Posted: 14/09/2010
James, Duke of York was one of the finest fighting Admirals of the seventeenth century. He was the brother of Charles II and Charles made him Lord High Admiral even though he had no experience of the sea. James went on to lead the British at the battles of Lowestoft (1665) .... Read More
The Admiral Benbow. You never knew that.
Date Posted: 14/09/2010
Advance copies of The Admiral Benbow have come through today which is very exciting. So here’s some facts you didn’t know about Benbow to get everyone excited. 1. Benbow lived for a while in John Evelyn’s House in Deptford, but then sub-let it to Peter the .... Read More
Chatham Dockyard, The Fighting Temeraire and HMS Achilles.
Date Posted: 28/08/2010
Geoffrey Winter has kindly got in touch from Australia because he was particularly interested in the construction of the Temeraire at Chatham Dockyard. His great great great grandfather, John Weekes, was the Assistant Master Shipwright at Chatham until his retirement in .... Read More
Anniversary of the Capture of the Temeraire
Date Posted: 19/08/2010
August is an excellent month for naval anniversaries. We had the 308th anniversary of Benbow’s Last Fight last week and today is the 251st anniversary of the capture of the Temeraire. The ‘Fighting Temeraire’ so famously painted by Turner being taken to the .... Read More
Benbow’s Last Fight
Date Posted: 16/08/2010
308 years ago on Wednesday, Admiral John Benbow fought his last fight in which he was wounded and later died. He was abandoned by his captains and ‘Benbow’s Last Fight’ has since become a famous example of naval cowardice that represents the bottom of the scale of British .... Read More
Navy Days Book Signing
Date Posted: 02/08/2010
I was lucky enough to do a book signing at the Royal Naval base in Portsmouth last weekend and witnessed the extraordinary popularity of the annual Navy Days celebration. Some 25,000 came through the gates and there were lengthy queues to see the new Type 45 destroyers .... Read More
Top Ten British Naval Victories
Date Posted: 28/04/2010
Follow the link here for my Top Ten British Naval Victories published in the Mail on Sunday http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home /moslive/article-1255826/Ten-greatest-British-naval-victories-A-look-nations-hardest-fought-battles-sea.html I am sure you will all have something to .... Read More
Haiti today and Port Royal, Jamaica, in 1692
Date Posted: 21/01/2010
Whilst reading all the horror stories coming from Haiti, it is worth remembering that Haiti is opposite Jamaica where there was a devastating earthquake at Port Royal in 1692, which raised many of the same problems. Perhaps 5000 of a population of 6,500 died, but only 1/5th .... Read More